The Phantom Girl
by Cherry Blossom Haiku
Summary: There once was a phantom girl who traveled the Digital World. For twelve years she wandered as half a person, just trying to find a friend.


After a few years of not writing fanfiction I have returned. With a vengeance.

Not really but I really missed writing and my favourite Digimon character is June so I sometimes just like to roll off ideas like this once because why the hell not.

Enjoy :)

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From twelve years ago, there is still a piece of her soul traversing the digital world. It is a wisp of a phantom, travelling from shadow to shadow without a destination. She searches for arms to fall into, though there really is no goal, just the endless wanderings of a girl that was forgotten in history. She only exists now to live in the darkness, in all places where light does not reach.

Caves are a safe haven, the deeper the better. She can sleep there without disturbance for days, sometimes months, until a stray Digimon walks in and claims the hovel as his own. Then she travels again, trying to find a place dark enough to keep her cold. Warmth burns her, leaving her skin marked and scarred when she wishes to be beautiful. Around her, however, there is a world that does not see her as such. Darkness is an abomination. She is a monster.

Her body, which exists now as nothing more than the leftover skin of a snake, still lives in the real world, walking among men and not shadows. None of them can tell that she is not whole, that a part of her is missing. Her family also remains blissfully unaware of her dwindling existence. She should not be alive. She knows she should not be able to do what she does. But she is a body without a soul, and she knows these things, but she does not understand why.

Her soul, blind to the confusion of her body, continuously wanders, but sometimes she reacts to her shell, when there is a stimulus that cannot be ignored. Her soul remembers all of the experiences from before the separation, and one of them is friendship.

She used to have friends, humans and Digimon with whom she travelled the world. They were a team and they were inseparable. They won all of their battles and they saved the world. The humans, with the power of stones that they were told represented the best parts of them, helped the Digimon grow stronger. The bonds of friendship and love were unbreakable, unstoppable.

She always held a blue stone. She was courage personified, and she would never let her friends down. She did not remember their names, calling them by their stone. She knew she was close to Love and Friendship, that they were the pillars of her world. Some bonds can never be broken, not even when the masters of the bonds change.

Twelve years ago she was pulled from herself. Her little blue stone was taken from her, her friends died away. The humans lost themselves to sadness, and the Digimon faded away until they were nothing but data. In the madness of the exchange, she split in two. Her body stayed in reality where it would not be harmed, her soul remained in another universe, forever wandering looking for her friends. And one day they returned.

This spirit glides throughout the world unaware of what is happening. She did not know there were other humans among the Digimon, and that around their necks hung pretty little stones. Stones that they were told represented the best parts of them. Stones that allowed Digimon to grow stronger, to evolve into better fighters. She did not notice until one crossed her path and she felt the familiar tug of an everlasting bond, and she pulled Friendship into her world of darkness.

But it wasn't him.

Sure the essence was more or less the same but something was fundamentally different about this person than the boy Friendship once was. He was colder and less tangible. This was not the ghost she had been searching for. He was flesh and bone yet completely and utterly unreal at the same time. He did not embrace her as she had expected, instead his soul rejected the safety of her shadows and he stopped moving. But he was speaking, but they were words she did not understand. Words of self-loathing she was unable to listen to. He sounded sad, and so she reached through the darkness to comfort the troubled boy. She kept him there, watching and waiting for him to remember who she was. And he never did.

She remained unaware of the Digimon by his side. She was not searching for the creature so she subconsciously ignored this unwanted visitor who had followed his friend into her realm.

Eventually, Love came back as well, but this phantom girl did not recognize this version of her friend either. Like Friendship she rejected the darkness and fell into sadness. Again, this specter tried to console the weeping soul and found that she could not. She held her two friends in her grasp until they were taken from her by other humans, with souls she vaguely remembered but could not hold onto. Like the outside world they pushed her aside and out of their memory.

Darkness, she realized, was her safe haven, but not one for anyone else. Nobody wanted to be with her anymore.

In the universe outside of her small reality her body lived on. Years after the soul had tried to take a hold of her long lost friends; the body felt a tug at the sight of a man. A beautiful man, who caused a reaction this shell had never experienced. It was so strong that even the phantom girl in the shadows felt it. The body had recognized Friendship in his new form and rushed to grab it.

The soul used the body to try and grasp the boy once more, and this time she was relentless. She was determined to never lose her friend again.

But things were changing in the darkness. The soul was growing angry at her isolation. She remembered coldly how close she was to having her friends again that she was willing to do anything to get them back. With the memory of the villains who took them away from her, those with the souls she could only try to recognize, she vowed her own secret revenge, a hateful thought that never transferred to the body.

Out of her hate she created a world that she could walk out in the open. She created the ocean that was so black one could not recognize the beginning from the end or the shallow from the deep. The rocks that were grey and sharp, but cold above all other things. But it was the ocean she was most proud of, with its vastness and its hypnotic beauty. Digimon who were as cold and hateful as she was found themselves in this world as well, and she welcomed her new companions. But she longed for human interaction, the bonding power she had not experienced since she was split in two.

So with a careful eye forever watching her creation, she turned towards the world from which she was born. The world of the body. And she chose a target. It was a beautiful boy, with blue-black hair and a heart that had turned dark with grief. She did not recognize his spirit and drew him to her. But as he grew more hateful he drew away from her. He pushed her out of his memory and left her once more to herself.

She realized that in order to keep someone close to her she needed to have bonds with them. She had none with the boy. And as she watched over the Earth she found a girl with a soul comprised of light. A soul she remembered but had no memory of. But she felt a connection and lured the girl to her and figured out that this girl was one of those villains. One of the kidnappers of friends. Due to her hatred she decided to forego companionship with the child and handed her over to the evil Digimon that lived on the ocean side. And then she was gone. Another child, a boy this time, took the girl away. And the soul's quest continued. Wanting both revenge and someone who would never leave her.

The body remained adamant on possessing the handsome boy, the one who was both Friendship and another at the same time, but the soul was no longer interested. The body was once again left alone to her devices until she too no longer wanted to chase the living.

The phantom girl remained unmoving in her little realm for months. She had not forgotten the boy who had taken her victim, the one with the blue-black hair, or the girl with the glowing soul, but she could no longer forget. She could not afford to anymore. One day, on a single whim, she looked at the digital world and saw the boy whom had turned dark and the light hearted soul of the girl. She gazed at them and had a thought. She was going to try once more, but the image of her beautiful ocean no longer enticed them and they became paralyzed with fear.

She had figured out the hard way that she was no longer able to bring people close to her. She had lost her ability to create bonds.

She abandoned her world of shadows and returned to her wanderings. As she lay down one night to sleep in a cave she noticed a pool of water. With shaking hands she dragged herself to look at her discovery. Where her ocean had been so black no reflection could be made, this pool was clear. Her eyes, which had long since adjusted to seeing clearly through the darkness, peered into the pool and saw her face.

It had been twelve years since she had seen her own face she had forgotten what she had looked like. She marveled at the length of her hair and how it towered over her head, though it had been matted down by years of dirt and grime. Her face was mature, and she thought to herself that her body must be pretty.

As she gazed into the pool she wondered. She mused about the life she would have had if she had never split in two. If she had never received her stone. If she had never fallen into the digital world at all. Her hands shook as she reached over to touch the water. It rippled under her fingers and she tried to remember the last time she had such a strong sensation.

Her body back on Earth shuddered in her sleep. The connection she could never quite feel for the past twelve years was slowing severing, and in her slumber the body recognized that something was slipping away. And when she awoke she felt more human, more whole. She no longer felt like she was missing something, she stopped feeling like she should really be dead.

The body was given the chance by the soul to be free to forget. The ghosts that had been haunting her mind disappeared, and when she looked in the mirror she saw someone else. She had become someone who was no longer hiding skeletons, even if she could never remember what secrets were hidden inside the depths of her mind. And when she smiled, for the first time it did not feel like the darkness inside her head was holding her back.

The soul continued to look at her reflection in the pool with both surprise and recognition. At the same time she felt like she could remember the face staring back at her, yet it was completely new. The face she had expected to see was young, with eyes so naïve and full of hope.

When she was whole she squinted to see the future, wondering endlessly about who she would become. The soul alone could barely make out the present; the future was of relatively no concern.

She became so overwhelmed with thoughts and emotions she could barely tell that her face was slowly slipping away. For the first time she was not slipping back towards the shadows but was falling head first into the light. Barely recognizing her own descent, she welcomed the warmth for she had lived her life freezing for so long.

There used to be a phantom girl who roamed the digital world. She wandered for twelve years trying to locate her missing friends. She was the first soul to grasp Courage, and the first to have it violently taken from her hands. At times she could barely remember why it was she travelled from shadow to shadow, never quite knowing who she was. She tried to call the living to her, but they were unable to understand her attraction to the dark and pushed her away. Through her hatred she created a world with an ocean of pure black water. And there she remained in the cold until the light came back to call on her.

Gazing into her reflection she felt as if she knew all. With her hands grasping for the light to take her away she felt them. The arms of her long lost friends were wrapping themselves around her. She willingly allowed herself to face the unknown. When she finally noticed the light she pushed herself forward, aching to make it back to her friends. Wanting desperately to have a home again at last.

And in the madness of her final moments words sprung to her lips. Bringing air into her lungs she whispered her final words with a rusty voice,

"I remember. My name is June."

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I hope you enjoyed reading my little story!

Let me know what you think of it!

Much love 3


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